How Spinning Will Help to Keep You Fit

Created by South African-born Johnny G, spinning (or indoor cycling) has been around since the 1980s. However, unlike other fitness fads, it has stuck around for the last 30-odd years.  The biggest reason for this is its incredible capacity to keep you cardiovascularly fit.

What are the types of fitness?

Believe it or not, being ‘fit’ doesn’t just mean that you aren’t panting when you run up the stairs. There are four types of fitness you can learn at trifocusfitnessacademy.co.za and you can be physically fit in one aspect but totally unfit in another. The fitness types are:

• Cardiovascular fitness
• Anaerobic fitness
• Flexibility
• Muscle strength and endurance

Spinning works on developing your cardiovascular (or cardiorespiratory) fitness.  When you are cardiovascularly fit, your heart becomes more efficient in delivering oxygen to your muscles. This allows you to expend more energy on during your spinning session.

If you’re anaerobically fit, you can exert short bursts of energy at a time during your preferred sport or exercise. For example, sprinters have to be incredibly anaerobically fit as they need to cover a particular distance in the shortest time possible.

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Flexibility allows a person to exercise a wide range of motion with their joints. For example, a person who’s flexible will be more likely to be able to touch their toes while a person who isn’t flexible will probably not get very far. Exercise modalities such as Yoga and Pilates allow one to increase flexibility.

Muscular strength and endurance are built with strength (resistance) activities. The greater the weight that is used, the more energy a muscle has to exert in order to lift it. As a result, the more well defined it becomes. Weight training can be conducted using free weights and weight machines. Pilates is also a form of resistance training because instead of using external weights as a form of resistance, a person’s own body weight is used.

It’s not only men who will benefit from gaining muscular strength and endurance. Women will too as training with weights builds lean muscle mass (which burns fat and calories even while you’re at rest) and improves bone health and density. It’s a misnomer that women will develop bulky muscles when training with weights. It is indeed possible for women to bulk up in the same manner that men do, however they will have to work consistently at this. But with moderate weight training, this won’t happen.

Spinning is great for developing abdominal strength

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People often think that spinning is just about sitting on a stationary bike and pedaling furiously when the instructor tells you to and slowing down when he lets you get a breather. However, when you stand up when you pedal, what helps to keep your posture are your abdominals. In turn, this will keep your back flat and relieve any pressure that may be caused in this area of your body.

In addition, when you perform a standing climb on your bike you’ll be developing a lot of upper body strength as you’ll be using your arms to balance you. However, make sure that you don’t exert more pressure than you should on your upper body because if you do, your trapezius muscles (in other words, those muscles that you find rising to your ears when you get stressed!) will take the brunt of it and you’ll find yourself going to the physio to relieve the tension.

Spinning is a fantastic – and very effective – exercise for you to develop cardiovascular fitness. However, you must not neglect other exercises as these will help you to develop other aspects of fitness in your lifestyle. Remember that there are so many exercises to choose from so if you don’t gel with one type of exercise, don’t worry. There are many others waiting for you!